Inkjet printers eject drops of liquid ink from inkjet ejectors to form an image on an image receiving surface, such as an intermediate transfer surface, or a media substrate, such as paper. Full color inkjet printers use a plurality of ink reservoirs to store a number of differently colored inks for printing. A commonly known full color printer has four ink reservoirs. Each reservoir stores a different color ink, namely, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink, for the generation of full color images.
Phase change inkjet printers utilize ink that remains in a solid phase at room temperature. After the ink is loaded into a printer, the solid ink is transported to a melting device, which melts the solid ink to produce liquid ink. The liquid ink is stored in a reservoir that may be either internal or external to a printhead. The liquid ink is provided to the inkjet ejectors of the printhead as needed. If electrical power is removed from the printer to conserve energy or for printer maintenance, the melted ink begins to cool and may eventually return to the solid form. In this event, the solid ink needs to be melted again before the ink can be ejected by a printhead. Consequently, the time taken to melt the ink impacts the availability of a solid ink printer for printing operations. Therefore, improvements to the devices in a printer that heat and store melted ink are desirable.